Ever since the Internet has fought back against the the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), top supporters of the dangerous blacklist legislation have tried to mask its full consequences by misconstruing criticism and distorting the opposition’s position. On Saturday, former First Amendment lawyer and current representative of the MPAA...
There has been a rolling scandal about the Carrier IQ software installed by cell phone companies on 150 million phones, mostly within the United States. Subjects of outrightdisagreement have included the nature of the program, what information it actually collects, and under what circumstances. This...
Russia On Thursday, prominent blogger and a leader of recent anti-corruption protests, Alexei Navalny was imprisoned for 15 days on charges of resisting the police. Navalny was one of hundreds arrested last week in recent widespread protests against political corruption and election fraud in the country. Navalny...
Update: According to her lawyers, Razan has been charged with "establishing an organization that aims to change the social and economical entity of the state" and "weakening the national sentiment, and trying to ignite sectarian strife" and "weakening national sentiment" -- all of which, according to Lebanon's Daily Star,...
When the government claims the right to shut down websites by breaking the Domain Name System and forcing search engines to dump user requests to reach a site, there’s only one word for it: censorship. And when big media groups like the RIAA can essentially cut off the...
Congress is debating dangerous legislation that would give the Department of Justice unprecedented power to “blacklist” websites without a trial and give Hollywood copyright holders a new way to shut down a website’s financial services for alleged copyright infringement. It’s nothing short of a bill to create a U.S....
Netherlands - On Thursday and Friday last week, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Uri Rosenthal, hosted the Freedom Online Conference in the Hague. The stated purpose of this Google-sponsored event was to forge a coalition of state, corporate, and civil society members to stand for freedom of expression...
Yesterday, in part one of our series, we looked at how corporations are already abusing the current copyright system as part of their business model, and how the blacklist bills would increase their ability to do so. Today, we’ll look at how the Justice Department and private companies have...
The blogosphere has been buzzing about revelations that CNET’s Download.com site has been embedding adware into the install process for all kinds of software, including open source software like NMAP. For the unwary, some of the ads could have been read to suggest accepting the advertised service (e.g.,...
The truly frightening legislative proposals known as SOPA and PIPA continue to loom in Congress, promising to put a big lump of coal in the stocking of every Internet user. So we were glad to learn that a bipartisan group of congressional represenatives has come together to formulate...
Proponents of the misguided Internet blacklist legislation — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) — downplay the idea that the overbroad bills could be used for censorship. But one only needs to look at the way existing copyright laws have been abused to know...
Update 12/09/2012: We are proud to announce a new $10,000 matching grant from Blake Krikorian to Power Up donations, starting at 6:30AM today. Thank you to everyone who helped us fly by our first two goals and surpass $40,000 in 12 hours!
Update 12/08/2012: Thanks to...
The Indian Telecommunications Minister met on Monday afternoon with top officials of Internet companies and social media sites, including the Indian units of Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, to compel them to filter offensive content. The New York Times reported that Minister Kapil Sibal met with executives to discuss...